Hi Will,This is an interesting post! It's amazing really how underutilised LinkedIn is as a B2B channel, particularly for smaller businesses. Many large corporates are doing an excellent job on LinkedIn but smaller companies tend to focus on Google as "it must be the best if it's Google".The one rule we reiterate to people is identify where your audience is and don't just join a social network because the accounting firm down the road has.Anyway, hopefully your post will help get this point across! Thanks for sharing.

Hi Rand,This was a really interesting video and, in my opinion, one of the most useful white board Fridays. Particularly in now that people are taking link building and outreach more seriously.Forgive me if somebody has already mentioned this further up in the comments - I haven't read all of them - sorry.Touching on your point of SEOs are often guilty of sending outreach emails to people they don't know on behalf of their clients... This has been an issue for a long time and one we have managed to overcome. The best way to make these relationships real / authentic is to attend industry events with your clients so that they can introduce you to 'influencers' within that industry - experts, press etc. This then helps the 'section' of the outreach email which creates the link to who you are and how they know you e.g. "Hi {name}, It was good to meet you at the show last week".By attending such events, not only do you build relationships with the people you ultimately want to reach out to, but you also increase your visibility in that industry and people often reach out to you.This is one of the most effective outreach tactics I've known!Thanks again for the video and I hope the weather over there is better than what we have in the UK at the moment!Elias

Nice post Larry,I'm certain that a lot of the increase in advertising spend could be attributed to the Google Penguin update with website owners rushing to AdWords to compensate for falling organic results.Would be interesting to see a comparison of Ad Spend alongside the Penguin timeline if that information was available.Good work, I love the graphic!Elias

Hi Danny,Nice, post with some interesting examples!We've seen good results from, relatively speaking, 'boring niches'... insurance.Even though people are inherently not interested in the subject of insurance (broadly), illustrating facts like "the cost of an average touring caravan insurance claim is 16 times the cost of an average policy" really makes people think about it and adds interest in the subject matter.Here's the example I'm referring toIt's got to be interesting an easily digestible. I've seen so many infographics created for the sake of creating an infographic. When done well, they work because they achieve their purpose - talked about and shared!Anyway, thanks for putting the above examples together.Elias

Completely agree with this, how do you go about removing 4100 links to one product page that you did not build in the first place. This is just insane. Even if you did make every effort, ultimately it is out of your control.

We inherited an account that had engaged an agency who were investing in the above link acquisition methods. Obviously, we put an end to it immediately and began to do things the right way but have now had to deal with this. I think the appropriate phrase here is "left holding the baby". Let's hope Google can work through their reconsideration requests in triple quick time as I'm certain they'll be getting a higher volume of requests.

That's a really good point! You would think that this would be an ideal way for search engines to determine relevancy and quality! It would be interesting to know more about this but I suppose only time will tell!

UGC is something we are heavily focusing on within numerous sectors. i think testimonials are a great use of UGC not only for search but also for the top line benefits of encouraging a conversion.

Just a thought... but does anybody know whether blogs that do not have many/any comments are viewed as poor quality by Google? It would make sense logically but can they apply that rule to all blogs without much UGC?

Nice post by the way - its good to hear other people's experience of new Algo updates!

It is so easy to get into the habit of hugely detailed reports. Tuis uses up the clients budget rather than spending the time actually getting results. From experience, clients would much rather see return on invesment in their bank accounts than on a piece of paper from their search agency.

That's not to say that we shouldn't report - just report in moderation, give the key information.

I think its important to consider that many so called SEOs do not actually understand how to do things "white hat". There are so many SEOs out there buying links and endulging in article syndication thinking that this is how to do it. These are often the cheap companies who appeal to small clients with limited budgets. Unfortunately, these clients do not understand what they are letting themsleves in for.

It is up to the SEO industry to educate clients about the dangers of getting things wrong before they find out the hard way!

I don't think Google are as good at identifying spam as they say they are. We see so many websites rank highly and use many of the tactics in your post. Especially the text below the footer and the forum spam.

We've even seen websites rank number one using white text on a white background. I would have thought Google would be well ahead of spotting this type of spam.